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Tuesday, December 4, 2012

The Gift 1/11

Summary: It's been four long years of war and separation. Now the hostilities are over. But Kid's family is still flung to the far corners of the earth and he's feeling guilty he didn't go with them. Will the spirit of the Christmas season help him forget?Chapter 1

Fort Laramie,
Wyoming Territory

December
20th, 1865

They were tall, definitely knee
high. And they shone brightly in the
late morning sun that filtered through the store window. Someone had spent quite some time buffing the
black, patent leather until it gleamed.
The smell of the leather and oil hung in the air, as attractive as the
boots themselves. They were perfect.

Lou’s shoulders slumped at the
thought. Yeah. They’d be the perfect Christmas gift for Kid,
but there was no way they could afford them.
Turning away from the display, she moved across the store to the shelf
stocked with candies of all sorts.

“A little something sweet for the
babies?” Emma asked, smiling as she glided to Lou’s side, her skirts swishing
gently about her. It was a trick Lou had
never quite managed to acquire. She’d
learned, eventually, how to move in the long skirted dresses without tripping
over her own feet. But that was about
the best that could be said. She wasn’t
precisely graceful at any time other than on the back of a horse.

Lou nodded her head. “I’m afraid it’s about all we can afford this
year,” she murmured.

Emma wrapped an arm around Lou’s
shoulders in commiseration. She well
understood what it was like to not have the money to spend on her children the
way she’d like. The last few years had
been hard on everyone. And Lou and Kid
had just been starting out, with the babies coming practically on the heels of
their wedding, scandalously so by some accounts. They were making ends meet and had a good
start on a working horse ranch, but had little for the extras in life. The only reason they’d been able to make this
visit was because Lou had insisted on bringing the children along when Kid came
to deliver a shipment of horses to the Army here at Fort Laramie. But Emma also knew Kid and Lou were too proud
to accept handouts. So, she’d just have
to be sneaky and get them all extra nice Christmas gifts. She’s sneak them into their luggage when they
left, so they wouldn’t discover them until they were well on their way home.

Lou reached out immediately and selected
a brightly colored stick of red and white candy. “Emmylu will want the peppermint, there’s no
doubt about that.”

Emmylu, or Emma Louise McCloud, was a
precocious three and a half year old, born not quite nine months to the day
after Kid and Lou’s wedding. She had all
of Kid’s black and white view of the world and Lou’s determination and
outspokenness. She also had a liberal
helping of stubbornness from both parents, making their lives miserable upon
occasion. Emmylu, born on the Fourth of
July, and her younger brother, born on Thanksgiving, were their Holiday Babies,
as Kid liked to call them. Lou rubbed
her belly, just starting to show, and wondered if they’d continue the
trend. Maybe this one would be a May Day
baby.

“But I ain’t so sure ‘bout Noah,” Lou
mused. Her just barely two year old son
had had little opportunity to try candy yet so she wasn’t really sure what he’d
prefer. Since she could only afford to
get him one stick, she wanted to make sure it would be one he’d like. “What do you think, Emma? The peppermint? Horehound?
Molasses? Butterscotch?”

“What’s that one?” Emma asked, pointing
to a collection of black candy sticks at the end of the shelf.

“Licorice?” Lou wrinkled her nose. “No, I don’t think so. Not for his first piece at least.”

“Why don’t you go with the butterscotch,
then,” Emma suggested. “It’s sweet but
nothing too….. drastic. Should appeal to
the little one.”

A soft smile broke out on Lou’s face,
one that obviously had little to do with her young son. “Just like his Pa,” she murmured so softly
Emma wasn’t even sure she’d heard her correctly. “Better get two or Kid’ll get jealous.”

“Alright,” Lou said, finally giving in. Reaching out as eagerly as any young child,
she snatched a stick of the horehound candy off the shelf and added it to her
small pile of purchases. Along with the
four sticks of candy it included a mass of brown yarn she planned to turn into
mittens for everyone, a small packet of sugar for Christmas cookies and three
oranges. They were the last ones the
store had, sitting there in their proud glory on the counter. She and Kid would have to share, but it
didn’t matter. She could hardly wait to
enjoy their juicy sweetness on Christmas morning.

Moments later, the two women had paid
for the things they’d picked out and were walking down the boardwalk, deftly,
at least on Emma’s part, sidestepping soldiers rushing to and fro, on their way
back to Emma and Sam’s house, chattering about everything and nothing.

Lou laughed at Emma’s stories about her
boys’ latest antics, Sam, Jr, and Isaac were always getting into
something. Then there was baby Sarah
Elizabeth, born just four months ago.
Just starting to roll over and attempt crawling, she was the center of
Cains’, all of them, world and was going to end up being one spoiled little
girl if they didn’t watch it.

Lou’s lighthearted gaiety faded as they
neared the Cain residence on the edge of town.
Sam was out in the yard, playing horsey with the children. Right now Emmylu was riding his shoulders,
digging her heels in and yelling “Yee-haw!” at the top of her little lungs,
while the others cheered her on. Kid was
nowhere in sight. Lou knew where he’d
be. Sitting in the bedroom Sam and Emma
had given them, staring out a window, absently fiddling with his
harmonica. It seemed that was all he did
lately if he didn’t have an actual chore presented to him.

It broke Lou’s heart to see him like
this, but she didn’t know how to break him out of his growing depression. It had started back in late summer, when the
celebrations over the end of the war had faded away and none of their brothers
had shown up, as promised. Kid kept
staring across the prairie, watching and waiting, ready to call out ‘Rider
comin’!’ at the first sign of anyone’s return.
Except none of them had shown up yet.
Each day he’d withdrawn a little more from her and the children. Now, she didn’t know how to reach him
anymore.

She sighed forlornly. Emma, having seen Lou’s eyes flit across the
front yard to the front porch and then up to the second story window of their
bedroom, put a comforting hand on her arm.

“It’ll be alright,” she said. “He’ll… you’ll both get through this. For better or worse, remember?”

Lou visibly tried to shake off her own
melancholia. “I know,” she said, forcing
a smile for Emma’s benefit. “We’ve had
the better, and we will again. But, I
worry about them, too, you know?
Teaspoon, Cody…. Jimmy,” her voice caught momentarily on that last name,
her best friend. “We haven’t even heard
from Buck in years. I know it weighs on
Kid. It’s just so hard to see him
hurting like this.”

She’d known this day was coming from the
moment he’d announced his decision not to go to war. It was shortly after they’d discovered she
was already with child. They’d only been
married a few weeks and Kid had been loath to leave her behind. So, instead, they’d contacted Emma and Sam
and arranged to buy the old Shannon farmstead now that it was no longer being
used as an Express Station. They’d moved
further west to escape the tensions of the war and start the horse ranch they’d
been dreaming about and planning for, but not before they’d gotten a promise
from each of their brothers and Teaspoon to come visit as soon as the war was
over, thinking it would only be a few months.
But the war had dragged on for three more years. Now it was over and still they hadn’t come
yet.

“I’d hoped this trip might help, seeing
you and all.” She stopped and shrugged.
There was nothing more to say. It
hadn’t worked. Leaving Emma to greet her
husband, Lou went on inside the house in search of her own spouse.

Moving up the stairs, she paused in
front of the door to the room she, Kid and their children were sharing. She took a deep, fortifying breath, then
opened the door and briskly strode into the room, chattering brightly.

“I managed to get a few Christmas
presents for the children,” she said, smiling as she laid her packaged
purchases down on the bed. “It won’t be
much, but they’ll have fun.”

She turned to where Kid was sitting in a
chair by the window, just as she’d figured he’d be doing. She walked over and brushed his hair off his
forehead before leaning down to kiss him in greeting, acting for all the world
as if nothing were wrong.

“Sam and Emma are planning a special
goodbye dinner tonight,” she continued.
“But I want to make sure we get the children in bed early so they don’t
keep us from getting an early start in the morning. It’s going to be a long enough ride home as
it is and I’d like to make it back before Christmas. I know Barnett will be glad to see us back,
too. He’s never comfortable when we both
leave the ranch and he’s got to take care of everything.”

Continuing her chatter, she began to
pack their possessions into the carpetbag and saddlebags they’d brought with
them. She lost her train of thought as
the first few notes escaped the harmonica, but then continued on as if nothing
had happened while Kid played the melancholy tune of Aura Lee behind her. There’d been a time when she’d thought it was
pretty. Now, she detested every note of
that song.

The Author

Who am I? A Hispanic broadcast journalist, current host of Kansas Week on KPTS, and certified high school teacher, a writer and lifelong lover of all things historical, particularly the Old West. I'm married to a wonderful man from Germany and we have a 17 yr old son. We have two rescued cats and a rescued pooch, who thinks she's a 70 lb lapdog. I'm prone to talk about anything and everything that catches my interest.